


lovetalk

by winluvr



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blow Jobs, Character Study, Emotional Sex, Friends With Benefits, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Porn With Plot, Relationship Study, not beta read we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:35:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26559829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winluvr/pseuds/winluvr
Summary: will all the warm bodies in the world make it enough?
Relationships: Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi, Past Miya Atsumu/Suna Rintarou
Comments: 11
Kudos: 79





	lovetalk

**Author's Note:**

> cw: explicit sexual content (blowjobs, handjobs only), alcohol consumption, dirty talk
> 
> the timeline might be a little confusing. also note that atsumu and sakusa do not play volleyball anymore.

“Leave the perfume on the shelf 

That you picked out just for him.

So you leave no trace behind

Like you don’t even exist.”

* * *

Suna breaks up with Atsumu on a hot summer day. This is the first and most important event that has happened to him.

The taste of cigarette smoke is strong on their tongues and the bottles of beer are strewn across the floor. The smell of desire lingers in the air in the form of sweat after lying down together in their loveless bed and Atsumu feels like a live-wire as he tries to stop himself from breathing it all in. 

Suna is the first to speak, his eyes pitch-black as he looks at Atsumu. “What happened to us, Atsumu?” He’s always like this, his eyes black like ink on a glossy white envelope, his stare heavy, cold on Atsumu’s warm skin. “What happened?”

Atsumu wondered how Suna could keep asking even when he knew well enough what happened. Or rather, what didn’t. Atsumu wondered if Suna had already forgotten, but then again, he had always been the one to remember birthdays and special occasions. Maybe he couldn’t forget everything that happened, so he buried it in the back of his mind to trick himself into forgetting. And so Atsumu tricks himself into thinking that he wasn’t the only one who couldn’t forget.

What does forgetting entail for him, after all? For either of them? Atsumu couldn’t imagine forgetting this boy, his eyes that are as black as the night, his shoulders broad like a faraway mountain top tucked away in the visceral portion of his mind and his gaze packed shut with desire. What harm would remembering and remembering and _remembering_ do, anyway? What harm would something like that do to them?

Atsumu doesn’t answer. Doesn’t shrug, doesn’t open his mouth to speak. Instead, he uses his mouth to shut him up, honor him with his head trapped between his thighs. He tries to make him forget what happened the night before. He tries so hard, so hard to make it all enough.

After all, it could all have just been an illusion, another trick of their own minds as they sweep themselves into another waltz under the sheets. They have always been so good at this game, tugging on each other like they could have been two ropes in a game of war, dancing with each other’s hands wrapped around their waists. What is this? Is this love, still?

Still, being warm doesn’t necessarily equate to love. A warm body doesn’t necessarily mean that you feel safe, secure with him. Maybe that’s where they went wrong, when they mixed up warmth and intimacy. Intercourse and familiarity.

“What happened to us, Atsumu?” Suna asks now, suddenly small and scared and so fragile. Atsumu didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh at the look in his face or wrap his arms tight around him. Atsumu couldn’t stand being so afraid so he let Suna be the one to be weak for tonight. He’s suddenly so inconsolable and Atsumu is even afraid of touching him. “Where did we go so wrong? What do we even have left?”

It’s half past twelve when Atsumu switches the lights on. He looks at him, eyes blown wide and bloodshot as he looks back at Suna. He laughs, the taste of his own mouth bitter with the taste of smoke, with the taste of Suna under the seabed of his tongue. “When have we ever been right?”

Suna looks at Atsumu once more and doesn’t even struggle to comprehend him. Instead, he sweeps his gaze away from the side of his face. It’s so easy for him to string Atsumu like this because he knows all too well that he has him wrapped around his little finger. One downward gesture and Atsumu would be on his knees to sing for the glorification of the boy.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Suna looks at Atsumu and suddenly he turns into coal, burning so bright in front of his eyes. The embers catch in the air and Atsumu has to cover his nose, wipe the tears forming under his eyelids. “We didn’t fuck anything up. We were already fucked up from the start.”

Atsumu stays still, quiet. He’s stuck to his seat. Suna blinks tears away from his eyes and says, “Where does your love end, Atsumu? Where will your love end?” He looks back at Atsumu and shakes his head. “Has it already ended, Atsumu?”

“Suna, you know I didn’t mean it,” Atsumu calls out to the boy standing across the room now. “Suna, come back. We can fix this. Please, Suna. Please. Let’s talk about this.”

“No, Atsumu,” Suna bites out. He isn’t quite close to being furious, not enough that you would see smoke seep out from his ears. But he’s furious, and Atsumu knows this because he’s speaking a lot more than he’s used to. He’s filling up all of the space that the silence, their own silence left. “You see, whenever you touch me, I feel nothing but cold. Whenever you reach out to hold me, I have never felt any colder.”

Atsumu pulls down the hand covering his face. Instead, he tries to breathe in what’s left of Suna, who’s walking away from him with long steps in quick succession, a radial blur of powder blue and white in front of his eyes. His hand comes away clean of coal smoke, but his palm feels like it’s burning.

* * *

Atsumu meets Sakusa on a hot summer day too. This is the second most important event that has happened to him.

Atsumu meets Sakusa in the middle of an _izakaya_ that he had never been to before, but pulled his car over on the way home to check it out. He hadn’t exactly been planning on taking someone home, but he always kept a condom or two in their near-perfect packaging in his wallet for emergencies.

Atsumu has already gotten tired of waiting around for other people to come around and pay him company in his house that now felt so empty, waiting for Suna to talk to him for his peace of mind and maybe even move back in because he really couldn’t afford such a luxurious apartment all by himself. And so, he finds himself crawling over to the door.

Atsumu went inside looking for someone else’s body heat to snuggle closer to. The night has turned him achingly desperate for company. Checking it out led to staying for a couple of drinks, _alone,_ and a couple of drinks led to Atsumu being both lonely and desperate enough to talk to the boy sitting on the bar stool beside him. _Seems familiar,_ Atsumu thinks, although he doesn’t register the name or the face as quick as you would an old friend. Although Atsumu isn’t really the type who would forget seeing someone so pretty.

He’s pretty enough for Atsumu to not get sick of looking at the whole time and he looks sober enough. Sober, Atsumu thinks, was stretching it, judging by the glasses of gin surrounding him. He’s at least a little more sober than Atsumu currently is, which is good, because he doesn’t take drunk people home. It would be too much to take care and nurse two people, one of them being himself, all at once.

(“It’s you,” the boy sitting beside him had said, plainly. “Miya Atsumu.” Suddenly, Atsumu recognized him. He would know that baritone voice anywhere, those pitch black eyes. _He has the same eyes as Suna,_ Atsumu notes. It’s so easy to look into those dark gazes and find yourself swallowed up until you’re little less than a casualty. So easy to turn something into a disaster, a catastrophe, until there’s nothing left of you.

But he’s not Suna, not Sunarin who he had spent half of his life with and had thought of spending another lifetime with. He’s not Suna who had broken his heart and walked away, still holding one of his pieces in the shell of his palm like it was something to treasure, something to feel proud of. He’s not Suna who had never actually told him that he loved him. 

He’s not Suna who had turned him into just another statistic, another warm body to reside in when he has nowhere to come home to and Atsumu didn’t know at that moment if he should feel grateful for that. Maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe he should have. Still, it doesn’t matter all the same to Sakusa.

Instead, Atsumu spills himself into a bottle of whiskey that Sakusa poured for him. He spills and spills and spills like a careless river and Sakusa has to hold his hands out so he wouldn’t spill down the jagged cracks between his fingers.

The feelings he had buried long ago, once when he had felt so numb he just couldn’t care about anything, came back at that moment. And suddenly, they were swimming back to the surface like an endless sea stretching out in front of them. It’s all aquamarine, the deep blue sadness hanging over his head, although Sakusa spins it into his fingers to recreate it into something akin to a fond memory, something to bask in.)

Atsumu had felt so numb, long ago, that maybe just now, he wanted to feel something other than another version of the five stages of grief. Maybe that was why he had let himself climb into Sakusa’s car, then into his apartment, then into his bed. Atsumu vaguely remembered slipping his shoes off in the middle of everything, splitting open a _mikan_ orange with a broken knife and his bare hands and his body settling under Sakusa’s pure white bed sheets.

Sakusa looks at him, studying him carefully like he’s trying to frame him into a portrait of one’s own desires. The prelude to desire, the summit of something new. “This isn’t cheating, right?” he asks, a deep-seated worry settling into the furrow of his brow as he stares. “You broke it off long ago, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Atsumu says, his breath warmed with the taste of cheap _sake_ that he had drunk straight from the bottle _._ A form of liquid courage that he was used to. He’s still wearing the same clothes as earlier, although they were in a more disheveled state now. His necklace is lying on the bedside table beside Sakusa’s gold-rimmed glasses, and his white dress shirt is unbuttoned halfway down, exposing his chest.

Sakusa inwardly thinks that he looks more beautiful this way. There’s something about how he looks like he had been scrubbed raw around his edges. So raw, so emotional, so fragile. Nothing like the widely-idolized setter he had been in high school, when he stood so high and so unafraid. 

Atsumu continues, “Walked out on me two weeks ago. Might ‘ave been months.” He attempts to look cool by shrugging it off, but it all falls flat and all there is left to do is Sakusa looking at him in pity. “Don’t really bother counting anymore.” He wasn’t lying, really. Not one word of it was a lie. Perhaps others would call it a half-truth, but Atsumu didn’t think he was immoral enough to lie about their relationship status.

“Are you sure this is okay?” Sakusa’s hand glides over the side of Atsumu’s cheek, down his lips, to the sliver of skin peeking out under his shirt. Atsumu feels like he could have been sculpted from marble, his anatomy set in stone in the back of Sakusa’s mind. “Are you sure?” he says again.

“Don’t worry about it, baby.” Atsumu presses a kiss to the corner of Sakusa’s slanted mouth. Kisses him again where there’s the tiniest hint of a mole below his bottom lip. “I’ll show ya how okay it is.” He holds Sakusa’s cheek in his hand, tilting his mouth up to his. “I’ll show you how good you are being to me right now. Face the mirror, Omi-kun.”

“Okay.” Sakusa steers his gaze away from Atsumu’s face to the long mirror beside his bed. “Then maybe I can help you forget,” he offers, his fingers crawling further and further down his chest, to his hips, to the heated space between his thighs. “As long as you show me how I can make you feel good. Better, at least, if that’s the only thing I can do for you.”

“Yeah,” Atsumu manages, breath hitched as Sakusa tugs on the front of his jeans, “sure hope you can.” He watches them in the mirror as they move side by side, their bodies a painful mimicry of how perfect he and Suna had moved together in their own memorized way. But maybe, Atsumu thinks, he didn’t have to fit together exactly, maybe he didn’t have to conform to all of Sakusa’s slots and grooves to please him.

Sakusa’s forehead crinkles only the slightest bit as he pulls down the zipper of Atsumu’s jeans. “Don’t doubt me, Miya.” Atsumu’s cock stretches his boxers until it springs free from its containment when Sakusa holds it in his hand, the head still slick with pre-cum forming at the topmost, still white and sticky like snow melting off at the peak of a mountain ridge.

Sakusa jerks him off that night in front of their own hazy reflections in the mirror. Pleasures him with his own mouth and his own two hands, for want of a more sophisticated word. Bodies in perfect synchronization like they were made to skirt around each other all this time. How do you even begin to describe the ceremony of two boys who are in love with the feeling of getting off on their highs without having to fall back into the earth face-down? 

In the morning, they become faded versions of the shadow they had been the night before. All of the warm bodies in the world pale in comparison with the heat they shared with each other. Their palms are stained with traces of their own un-diluted desire from the night before and countless more nights that they had spent lying alone in their own beds wrapped around themselves, but their knees come out clean of blood and scratches, their bodies still guileless. 

In the night, they set themselves to sleep beside each other under the sheets of their own desires. Atsumu lays himself to slumber and there, he sees peace. In the morning, they emerge a thousand times more beautiful, bathed in the white sheets and the remnants of each other’s salt-simmered bodies. Their bodies have become a stone bed of memories.

* * *

Atsumu looks at Suna now and sees sadness. He’s always been like this, all sad eyes and pale skin and unreadable stares that aren’t nearly tender enough to be called gazes. Atsumu didn’t use to mind, because he had never known tenderness, after all. What does tenderness mean to him?

What was tenderness by any other name, than the warmth he feels after a strong topspin serve that would eventually lead them to a victory that never felt any less of a victory, even when they came one after another? All their victories back in high school had been his victories too. They were the strongest contenders after all, so even winning against them was like a victory for them to. To be held up so high on a pedestal felt glorious, still. It never felt like a dethroning, but more of a rebirth. Another christening. He had never felt like a loser, wrapped tightly around the hot, sweaty huddles of grinning boys blurring into one another after a match. 

They could lose, lose and lose and still, the hunger for glory wouldn’t go away. There hadn’t been a moment since their childhood that Atsumu wasn’t actively hunting for glory, even if it came in the form of boys with colder souls than his own, boys with even colder hands that couldn’t possibly provide him with the warmth he is looking for. Still, he let them touch him even though they could never begin to reciprocate the love he has for the whole world. Still, he lets them try to make him feel glorious even though he knows there is only one person whose touch he’s actively looking out for. 

What is tenderness after all but all of the love one boy could give him? Only one boy, only one that he wants to touch and only one that he would ever let touch him. He couldn’t call it love, not yet, not when the only thing forming between them was a reckless trust. Trust on the court and outside, whether he was watching all of his spikes and never having to cheer because he knew all too well that he was good enough to make it go in, or when he trusted Atsumu enough to pull him closer to him, kiss him open-mouthed and buck his hips up when they laid in bed and fucked for the first time. 

Reckless, because what was the foundation that they were built upon except pure reckless pride? What was holding up their whole relationship except all of their former reckless decisions blurring together until, by now, they would seem somehow coherent? It was reckless when Suna had taken a step closer when Atsumu said, _Oh, you wanna kiss me so bad._ It was reckless when Atsumu had taken a swish of rum in his mouth and passed it over to Suna by kissing him until they both tasted like each other. It should have been gross to them, but neither of them cared enough at the moment.

It was all reckless affairs, all illicit activities between them that Atsumu couldn’t help but look back at them in shame. Where was the love in all of this? All of the love in the world couldn’t possibly be quantified by a kiss behind the lockers or their hands intertwined together before practice, but when had they shown their love for each other? Where was all of the glory in this? Atsumu wonders if it had seemed glorious to him at the moment when he thinks back to him bringing Suna home for the first time, both drunk out of their minds, for him to be the first one to stain his bed with his moonlight taste. All these firsts, but none of his lasts. All of the love in the world, all of the glory in the world, and then none at all. 

What was tenderness by any other name, than Aran-kun pressing his lips to his bandaged knuckles after patching them up when he bruised his hand on a ball served by some boy from the other side of the court with such a hard blow, back in his second year of high school? He could have bruised his hands a thousand times if he could only bring back the tenderness, the warmth of that single moment.

What was tenderness by any other name, than Kita-san bringing him a whole pack of pickled plums when he went down with a fever? Atsumu nearly cried at the thought of his old high school crush presenting him with _umeboshi_ like it could be a bouquet of flowers when he only got a little sick. He made sure to get up earlier the next morning and send him a note too, and to his _obaa-han_ , who had been the one to tend to Kita-san for all these years. Tenderness was appreciation, wasn’t it? Tenderness was gratitude to him.

Even now, when he’s all grown up and he can’t pursue volleyball professionally because of his damn knee injury, all he thinks of tenderness is a little heat, a desire flurrying inside his mind and leaving his head spinning as the warmth builds up under the cave of his palm. Was tenderness lethal in any way or form? Was tenderness supposed to be shaped like a double-edged sword, piercing you in the gut no matter what direction it faces, no matter which way you hold it?

Even in the night where he was supposed to feel safe and warm, tender even, Suna’s hands had always felt so _cold,_ like he had been sitting down on their bed naked in front of the air conditioner. Like he had been cooled down and hung out to dry on a coat hanger in the middle of the night. Where was the warmth left in him? Had there been any warmth at all in the first place? Still, Atsumu lets him touch him like he hasn’t been aching all this time from the lack of something else, something more complex. Complex, then simpler.

Maybe Atsumu had been searching for something simpler all this time. Maybe he had been searching for something truer to himself, closer to his roots. A little closer to the earth. Atsumu tries to turn his body into a furnace to accommodate some of the coolness Suna brings into their bed, but most of the time Suna comes in the form of endless precipitation and Atsumu’s been living in a desert for years. Suna is hail most of the time and Atsumu has come empty-handed, armed with nothing else but a flimsy umbrella to shield his head.

The hydrologic cycle that Suna was born from doesn’t stop there. Atsumu wonders if he had already breached the statute of limitation of loving a boy made of a different body heat temperature, a different flavor than he was made of. Suna was an entirely different calibre than Atsumu and at one point it didn’t matter. It didn’t use to matter, because they used to have each other’s lives held in their hands, pressed flat into their palms. It hadn’t been long since they first climbed into Atsumu’s bed and splayed out on it side by side under the first half of nightfall. It hadn’t been long since they touched each other, wandered down each other’s bodies for the very first time. It hadn’t been long since they had an agreement. It didn’t use to matter, until it did.

(Suna stands, holding an earthenware bowl of oatmeal in his hand as he watches Atsumu crawl over to the couch, only barely making it halfway before his knees buckle. “‘Tsumu,” he says from across the room, the sound of his voice now saturated with boundless frustration as he looks at him. “Atsumu, are you even listening to me?” There’s an edge to his voice, to the way he speaks now. “Are you _drunk?_ ”

Atsumu crumples into himself with unease at the way Suna is looking at him right now. Two nights before, he had looked at him with so much tenderness as he slotted himself between the space of his thighs, his mouth kissing the soft pale flesh. Suna had rubbed his thumb over the head of his cock that night before putting it in his mouth, his swollen lips wet and pink over the warmth radiating from his tip. 

Suna had looked at him with all of the softness in the world as he had bucked his hips up, thrusted into his mouth at a pace that seemed like there was no more space left for an hour of mercy. Now, Suna stood at the other side of the room and looked at him, face blank and expressionless. He stands still, just inches away from the skillet and their fridge that had once been full of tofu and shiitake mushrooms, oranges and plums and all healthy things. All a pretense of a healthy life. Suna looks a little lost, even, standing across him, wearing only an old Inarizaki shirt and an old pair of sweatpants. He looks threadbare, like he’s something coming from the past.

Atsumu had thrusted into Suna’s mouth two nights before with as much ferocity as a hound dog would chase you down the street. Or the other way around, if that’s what you’re into. The sun filters through the blinds, orange and bare across the walls of the room. Atsumu could only look at Suna now and watches him return the ferocity Atsumu had displayed the night before, reciprocating the raw feeling of hunger, the pain of desperation, the ache of anger as he stares him down like he’s trying to whittle him down to size. Like he’s trying to knock a wall down, one after the other.

Still, Atsumu doesn’t let himself back down as Suna stares at him, disappointment settling into the crease between his brows. “Yeah,” he says, a small shaken feeling of fear in the pit of his stomach. He had buried it so long ago that it all feels so familiar now. “Of course I am. ‘m listening, I mean.” Although maybe he hadn’t buried the old feeling of fear far enough. He remembers giving up on pulling the shovel up away from the thick, wet soil, his hand unclenching around the weight of it all. It had felt so heavy to be so afraid.

“I told you we were going to have _tonkatsu_ for dinner,” Suna repeats what he had said during breakfast yesterday. Or two nights before. Atsumu couldn’t bother remembering. He looks pissed, and he most likely is, judging by the way his nose crinkles as he takes a whiff of the smell of rum in the air. Atsumu’s gaze wanders over to the plastic bags. There’s something in there that looks like an orange bag of panko flakes. On the bowl filled with fruits and vegetables that serves as their centerpiece, there’s a cabbage in the middle, shaped like a flower, waiting to be shredded for dinner.

“I thought I told you to come home early because we were going to have dinner together.” Suna has laid out a placemat on the table at this point. Atsumu looks at him, studies him a little closer. There are tired rings around his eyes, darker than they were before. “I’ve gone grocery shopping already and they’ll just go to waste if we don’t eat them immediately. You know we don’t have enough space in our fridge.”

“Why’d ya wait for me, then?” Atsumu asks, then regrets the words immediately after he says them. Oftentimes his mouth moves faster than his mind would. “I don’t mean it like that,” he says. Then adds, after a short moment of consideration, “I mean. I mean, you shouldn’t have waited for me before you eat dinner. I thought you wouldn’t wait for me.” 

“You know I can’t eat without you,” Suna says. Atsumu feels his heart swell with guilt even more now as he looks at him. “You should have told me that you weren’t coming home early. Should have texted me, at the very least so I could have just adjusted the portions for the rice.” Shakes his head at the rice cooker, adding, “You should have told me that you won’t be coming home. You know I can’t sleep without you.”

“I didn’t know,” Atsumu says. “I forgot. It slipped out of my mind and I only remembered when I got home.” He looks at Suna and feels his heart waver under his chest. “Fine. I’m sorry.” He’s never been one for apologies, because it’s not like he could apologize for saying things the way they are. But he couldn’t stay still, not when Suna was looking at him like he had been betrayed. “‘S my fault anyway. I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Suna breathes out. He finally steers his stare away from the sharp of Atsumu’s jaw. Atsumu could feel it rumble as the weight of his gaze is taken away from it. “Make sure you eat before you come upstairs.” He pauses to point at the side of his own neck. “And make sure you wipe that off.”

Atsumu lifts his hand to touch the side of his neck, and his finger comes with a hint of lip gloss. Strawberry, he muses as he puts the finger in his mouth to lick it. _Ah, fuck_. How drunk had he been? He’d been drunk enough to forget what day it was. He’d been drunk enough to forget the interior design of his own house, drunk enough to forget the name of the person he’s been lying with. He’d been drunk enough yesterday to forget what time he should have come home and he’d been high enough on his hangover to forget what time he came home. How long had it been since he had been this drunk, this delirious with the pleasure of cold rum?)

In this love that had been birthed from compromises, was there still anything tender about it all? Was there anything to be grateful for? Atsumu looks back and watches Suna as he sets down a new mattress on the ground and stops sleeping beside him. Watches Suna, as he pulls away now when he tries to kiss him, flinches away as he wraps his arms around him in the mornings. Watches Suna, as he looks at new apartment leases somewhere in Nagano or Tokyo or even all the way to Osaka. A rebranding of sorts as Suna pulls himself away from Atsumu’s hometown. Was there anything left? Was there anything at all to steer clear away from?

* * *

“Make sure nobody sees you leave.

Hood over your head, keep your eyes down.

Tell your friends you're out for a run.

You’ll be flushed when you return.”

* * *

(“This would only be a one-time thing,” Atsumu had said that day, and Sakusa had been quick to agree. Sakusa wasn’t exactly the type to latch himself onto another person like they were something to hold on to, wasn’t the type to take ahold of someone else like they were his personal clutch.)

Atsumu found himself meeting, meeting and meeting him in the most contrived coincidences and one thing always led to another. It’s the same case for today. Atsumu had bumped into Sakusa as he was walking past him, holding a scalding hot cup of coffee, which had then spilled into the front of his white button-down, which has now somehow led to Sakusa climbing on top of Atsumu’s lap. _Wait, what._ Pause, rewind.

(Sakusa had barely even flinched at the heat. Atsumu has yet to catch him startle at something, catch him off-guard. Maybe he wasn’t one for showing the extremes of his own emotions. Atsumu wondered if one day he would catch Sakusa smile, even just a little, even the smallest hint, even the faintest whisper of a smile, toward his general direction.

“What the fuck, Miya.” Sakusa glares at Atsumu, then at the dark brown stain forming in front of his shirt. He pulls down his mask to speak, enunciate the venom in his tone. His stare is dark, unreadable. Unflinching, almost like he is trying to scrutinize every single inch of Atsumu. “What the _fuck_.”

Atsumu scrambles to try and wipe the coffee off his shirt with a half-clean handkerchief dug up from the front pocket of his jeans. “Omi-kun,” he says, still wiping at him, “isn’t it hot?” 

Sakusa clenches his teeth. “Of course it’s hot, you dumbass. I just want to get this thing off me right now or God help me.” He looks at Atsumu for a moment. “Take me home, _now_. I have to get this washed at the dry cleaner’s immediately.”

With a sigh, Atsumu follows his command, saying, “Okay, as you wish.” He pulls him into his car where he drives him over to his house so he can get washed, clean himself up in the shower. Atsumu ended up running all the way to the nearest laundry house to wash his clothes for him, hauling a large bottle of jasmine fabric detergent in his hand because it was the only scent of detergent Sakusa used. The other scents were too strong, he had said and Atsumu couldn’t argue.)

Sakusa emerges from the bathroom just after Atsumu comes home, wiping himself clean with the towel that Atsumu let him borrow. It was clean, of course. He knew better than to let him use something that had been used by someone else. And it wasn’t like Atsumu had invited anyone over these past few days. Past few months, even. It was only Osamu and Suna. Until Osamu got a house of his own from the restaurant money. Until Suna got up and left, moving all the way to Osaka or whatever he had decided on.

One way or the other, things move a little too quickly to be desired. Sakusa found himself having to strip himself bare all the way down in front of Atsumu. Atsumu hadn’t been too eager to hand him what he was supposed to wear, a pair of dark purple pajamas that would be three-fourth length at his wrists and cut off at his ankles. Instead, Atsumu beckons him to sit down beside him so he could dry his hair for him.

Sakusa looked at him with an eyebrow raised, although he wasn’t exactly able to resist. Atsumu ran his fingers through the dark of Sakusa’s curls that day, combing through it with a blue comb from the top of his dresser. When his hair dried, Atsumu invited him to the bed. “Come here, lie down.”

The pajamas found themselves being stripped away as quick as they were pulled onto Sakusa’s body. The sleeves pulled down his hands, forearms to wrists, over his head. The legs of the pajama pants pulled down to bare himself until Sakusa was wearing nothing but Atsumu’s navy blue briefs that seemed a little tighter on him. “Come on, baby.”

And so, Sakusa lets his body hover over Atsumu’s own, his eyes glossed over with a newly-redefined desire. His knees dig into either side of Atsumu’s hips as he straddles him, his legs swung across him, heavy but still graceful, elegant. Like all of the actions he takes, so carefully refined, so hypnotic like he’s performing a pirouette on the folds of his sheets. A ballet dancer, with the way his wrists stretch further than normal people do. A ballet dancer with the mouth of a god, the marble anatomy of an angel, the dark eyes of a demon.)

* * *

“Where are you, Suna?” Atsumu asks over the phone. For a moment, he wonders why he’s even asking him. If he knew, if he learned where Suna’s been staying for half a year now, what would he do about it? It’s not like he would come over to his new house, his new _home_ , drive halfway across the country to find him. It’s not like he would ask him to come back, or even just stay the night at his place so it would feel like home again. Maybe it never felt like home. Maybe it didn’t feel like home, even when Suna was the only one in it.

* * *

Sakusa looks up at him between his thighs, his eyes dark, his wandering hands supercharged with desire. In the night where the moon meets the night, their bodies have been scrubbed clean of their old desires and they have begun to reinvent their old _what-if_ s, repurpose their olds wants. Their voices swim in the sea of the night, heavy under their ears as it rounds all four corners of the room. Their mouths hover one another, swiping warily like they’re only trying to ghost over each other’s softness but not sink further, deeper into it.

Atsumu can feel Sakusa stiffen as he touches him, so he presses his palm over the back of his neck to help him relax into his grasp. And so his writhing comes to a still. And so he turns his body into an instrument for Atsumu to fiddle with, another plaything for him to pick up until he gets bored with the feeling of it on his hands. In the night, they join each other hand in hand as they move closer toward each other, inching closer and closer until their faces meet. 

“What are you waiting for, Atsumu?” Sakusa says, and it’s gentle, so gentle of him that Atsumu couldn’t help but falter.

Atsumu’s knees shake a bit at all of his little touches, though he wills himself to keep steady against him. “I’m only taking your lead here, Omi-kun. How do you want me?”

* * *

Atsumu watches Sakusa and all of his little rituals as he gets to work on him. That may be the only thing he can never get sick of. It’s all so fascinating, and it feels a little like home. 

Sakusa rolls his sleeves up his forearms until it bunches up around his wrists so he wouldn’t have to wash them clean of cum stains, so that they wouldn’t get in the way. He pulls his buttondown shirt apart, the buttons popping away at every tug. It’s all a little hypnotizing, really, when Sakusa moves like he is so scared of touching him in all the wrong ways, so scared of holding him wrong. Atsumu doesn’t disclose that Sakusa could never possibly touch him wrong. Not when he’s always been so careful, not when he’s always been so filled with the boundless grace of a thousand ballerinas.

Sakusa moves so, so slowly. Only by a thousandth of the smallest fraction, the smallest millimeter. He moves toward Atsumu by the smallest increment of a distance, and he can already feel Atsumu growing more and more desperate. He takes ahold of Atsumu’s hair, and all Atsumu can see now is the two parallel moles on his forehead and even the smallest crease between his forehead. All Atsumu can feel now is the feeling of desperation, like how you ache for even a drop of water when you’ve been stuck in a desert for so long. He’s been stuck in an abyss for so long, so long. Atsumu couldn’t help but reach out and press a kiss to the slant of his mouth.

Atsumu feels himself getting swept up in all of Sakusa’s gentle little movements, until Sakusa is hoisting himself up in the seat beside him in the car. Then, he moves his leg over to straddle him with his knee on either side of him, mounting himself unto the leather ocean. “Omi-kun,” Atsumu says, his hands holding Sakusa’s hips down so he sits right on top of his lap, “yer a little eager today, aren’t ya?” The words come out a little too breathless, like there’s something heavy on his tongue, like there’s something lodged down his throat.

“I could say the same for you,” Sakusa says. And suddenly he’s taking Atsumu apart again, again and again. Atsumu would have let him, because he offered all of the company he has ever wanted. All of the time he has ever needed. He has been craving for something all this time. He just couldn’t place a finger to what it was. Maybe it’s just a little closer to him now.

* * *

“I don’t know why you give a fuck where I am right now,” Suna bites out, and there’s a venom to his voice. He’s really trying hard to sound angry, bite out his words like a mad dog. 

“Suna,” Atsumu manages to say. “Sunarin, I’m sorry. Why did you have to run away to somewhere so far for so long?”

Suna tries to sound mad. Tries to stay mad. Although his words never sound mad enough, never have the right tone to them. He tries hard, although Atsumu knows he doesn’t mean it, they both know he never means it. He can hear his voice, muffled static over the screen, soften as he says the next words. He always softens when it comes to the twins. He always softens a little more when it comes to Atsumu. “Are you coming?” He sounds like a little boy. So lost, so lost, like he has been spaced out for such a long time. 

Atsumu feels a little lost too, whenever he looks at the house and sees a little bit of Suna in every single thing that catches his attention. He’s both everywhere and nowhere at once. Atsumu can see him in the extra pair of slippers, the blue toothbrush Suna left in the bathroom, the extra threadbare face towel by the sink. Atsumu has to stop himself from buying a pack of ice pops, the kind Suna has always liked since they were kids, whenever he goes to the supermarket now. Stop himself from buying too much for just one mouth.

So he says, “Yeah.” He doesn’t know how to deal with it, with everything that has happened these past few months. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

* * *

“And that's the thing about illicit affairs 

and clandestine meetings and longing stares. 

It's born from just one single glance, but it dies

and it dies and it dies a million little times.”

* * *

Sakusa lies with Atsumu now. He’s in his bed and it’s all a little comforting, a little familiar but unfamiliar too. He’s in his bed like Suna used to be and he’s touching him the way he likes to be touched. Just a little, the smallest build-up of his touch, his gentle movements. He’s moving so slow now, and it’s all so okay because Atsumu’s so sensitive, so sensitive. If he goes even a little faster, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. He wouldn’t know when to stop. All of the little touches in the world could never possibly measure up to how Sakusa’s touching him right now. 

“Tell me all about it, then,” Sakusa offers, a latex-gloved hand idly resting on Atsumu’s lap, hovering just over the belt loops. “Maybe I can help you get it off your chest.” 

(Then again, Sakusa looks different. His eyes are black, near blank. It’s different from Suna’s sad, slanted ones. His eyes are pretty, sure, they’re both so pretty. But Suna’s so captivating, even with the tinge of sadness that lingers in his eyes. Still, Atsumu couldn’t help but look. What’s a little beauty without some sadness? Sadness and beauty go hand in hand, after all. You can’t have one without the other. All of the beautiful things in the world have been through a tragedy, a devastation even once. All of the beautiful people in the world have been sad, even once. 

Sakusa’s eyes are pretty too, even if it’s in a different way from Suna’s eyes. His eyes look a little blank, a little devoid of emotion. It’s fine really, it’s all so fine, because maybe Atsumu could handle a break now. A break from tenderness, a break from vulnerability. Can’t a boy, barely a man still, run away from all of the responsibilities that he has in the world? Tenderness doesn’t have to be quantified, he knows this, he’s always known this. Maybe there’s something tender in the tips of Sakusa’s fingers whenever he touches him like he’s a raw, exposed thing. Like he’s a barbed wire, like he’s too high for him to climb. Has he gotten tired of climbing?)

“Okay,” Atsumu breathes out. “What do you want to know?” And honestly, he can’t help but be honest. He doesn’t even know where to start. He doesn’t know where everything went wrong in the first place. He’s never asked Suna, after all, having been too afraid of the answers to the questions an ex-boyfriend of so long, so many years is expected to ask.

(Suna smells different too. He learns this whenever he tries to breathe either one of them in. He smells like eucalyptus, a little like muscle relief patches and efficascent oil. He’s been using them since he’s been fifteen and on top of the world. Atsumu can’t help but wonder if he’s still playing like he used to, if he’s still on top of the world like he used to. Can’t a boy miss the memories of it all? Suna smells like home, like the smell of yesterday. Atsumu can’t help but breathe it all in.)

Sakusa looks at him. “What happened? How did it happen?” And Atsumu knows what’s still hanging at the tip of his own curious tongue, because it’s a question he’s always meant to ask, but never did. _How did you both know it was over?_

(Sakusa’s clothes all smell like jasmine laundry detergent, the kind that comes in the large bottles at the supermarket. He doesn’t smell like home, you know, he doesn’t smell like freshly-baked cookies and a pot of green tea by the counter. He’s never been like home, after all. He’s never been hearth. He’s more like something new, more like something to cater to. Maybe there’s a charm to new things after all, a charm to unfamiliar things. Maybe home can be all of the new things you have never had, the new things you never noticed. 

Sakusa smells a little like leather shoes that haven’t been used outside so they haven’t cracked at all. He smells like that, if only you could smell it and see how everything is so different. He smells a little like flowers, maybe, and Atsumu has never had flowers. He’s never given flowers and he’s never been given them. It’s all so wonderful to be around something new, something different. Entirely new sensations whenever he touches him. He smells like black coffee, the kind he brews everyday whenever he needs a caffeine boost to get through the day. He smells like new, looks like new and even tastes like new.

By now, Atsumu has learned how to stop from carving other boys out of the blank space in the walls. There’s little use in doing that, he knows. He just can’t help but conjure Suna back into existence. He thinks of Suna sometimes whenever he touches Sakusa and feels like a whole new man. He just can’t help but think of Suna’s lemon scent, _chuupet_ taste. He’s all the more beautiful with every passing second, all the more beautiful every single time Atsumu thinks of him.)

Atsumu looks down as the hand curls further and further up the zipper of his jeans. He lets it. “Yeah, we really hit it off, Sunarin and I. Before everything blew up in our faces, at least. We were happy, I guess, if that mattered at all. The high school best friends turned lovers factor really made it easy for us to just, I don’t know, coexist with each other.”

“Yeah. It’s easy to be around someone familiar,” Sakusa says in agreement, “I, of all people, should know, really.” He drags a slow line with his finger over the rough fabric of his jeans. Atsumu’s cock twitches under his hand and Sakusa smirks at him. It’s all a little mean, all a little vicious, like he’s enjoying the heat swirling at the pit of Atsumu’s stomach. Atsumu tries to reach up, grab his collar and kiss him hard. Kiss him soft, even, if he only lets him. Atsumu hopes he wouldn’t let him kiss him like that, because he’s trying so hard to forget what it feels like to go soft for someone else.

(Suna tastes different, too. And Atsumu learns this when he kisses Suna in their third year of high school and it all tastes like the sun. It all tastes like summer, really, because all of the corners of his mouth still taste like he’s been chewing on lemon slices. Atsumu kisses him and he tastes like fruit ice pops, the kind you buy at convenience stores, the kind you have to lap up the moment you buy them for the fear of it melting in your hand. He tastes like lemons and like cherries and like mangoes and like every single fruit in the world. 

Atsumu doesn’t know when he stopped associating fruits with Suna. Or his memories of Suna with fruits. He doesn’t know if he actually stopped, but maybe he’s making a little progress now. He stops thinking of Suna now whenever he buys ice pops, the chocolate kind. It’s the kind that has two sticks so you can split it in half. Back then, Atsumu would have shared it with Suna. The ice pops never come out even when he splits it, so he would have given him the bigger part back when he had been so generous. Back when he had been someone who would give without having to receive. 

Now, Atsumu peels open the wrapper and it’s all for him. All for himself, without anyone to partake in it. Atsumu sticks it all in his mouth before it even has the chance to dribble chocolate seed down the side of his mouth to his forefinger to the lines of his palm. Generosity feels like something far now, just like home. Home feels so far, like he has been so alone for so long. Like he’s been so faraway for so long.

Sakusa tastes different. Atsumu knows this. He doesn’t mind at all that he tastes more like _umeboshi_ , like sheets of _nori_ wrapped around a precisely-made _onigiri_ , like the mound of rice topped with a raw egg made for dinner. Atsumu’s a little afraid of sticking his tongue in Sakusa’s mouth. He’s a little afraid of sticking his finger to the inside of his cheek and feeling something move, feeling something raw and alive. He’s a little afraid of him tasting too real. It’s not like he tastes artificial. It’s like he tastes a little closer to the earth and Atsumu has always been so afraid of coming home.)

Atsumu manages a small smile. “Yeah. Heard a lot about ya back then.” Sakusa raises an eyebrow at him, prompting him to continue. “You guys caused a ruckus when you started dating before the Spring Tournament. Real sneaky of ya.”

Sakusa’s mouth slants to a frown. “Didn’t think you were the type to listen to rumors. We weren’t really dating.” He watches Atsumu’s face as the finger turns to a hand to palm him just over the zipper that still hasn’t been pulled down. 

“Sure you weren’t.” Atsumu looks at him in disbelief, though he doesn’t bother to prod further. Instead, he bucks his hips up looking for touch. “Didn’t even know you that well back then ‘cause we were a whole damn world and a half away from each other, but I knew yer name better than my own.”

* * *

Atsumu comes to visit Suna. He somehow bribed one of his old friends from high school to drive him all the way up there, when he could have just taken a cab. It would have cost him too much after all, and it’s not like his friend wasn’t happy to comply. He gets dropped off at the middle of nowhere. He’s never driven to this side of the country. His friend tells him he’s in the middle of Osaka when he looks around and feels lost. _Ah._ His eyes brighten. _This is his new home now._ He looks back around and he waves his friend off goodbye.

Suna opens the door and he looks a little more beautiful than he used to. Younger, even, as if the burden of having been around Atsumu has taken several years away from his face. There’s a trace of fondness around the corners of his eyes when he looks at Atsumu but it all goes away so fast that Atsumu can’t help but wonder if he only imagined it.

Suna looks a little like a figment of Atsumu’s imagination, a little like one of his wet dreams when he has his hand stuck down his underwear, really. He’s softer around the edges now, and Atsumu’s afraid he will all go away if he even tries to reach out a finger and touch him. This Suna looks like a daydream, stuck in one of Atsumu’s imaginary worlds. This Suna is beautiful, so beautiful that he doesn’t even seem real anymore. He shines so much brighter now. This Suna opens his mouth to speak. “Are you happy now, ‘Tsumu?” 

* * *

Atsumu watches Sakusa now. He looks beautiful, really. He’s always been. He’s almost mesmerizing, always fascinating.

He used to watch Suna and all that he does and now, he’s watching Sakusa as he moves toward him. It almost seems like watching people move closer and closer toward him, then pull further and further away is all he’s ever known. He can’t help but wonder if Sakusa feels welcome, so he tries his best to adjust and accomodate for him. Make him stay, make him stay the only way he can. Still, the thought lingers somewhere in the back of his mind. He just can’t help but wonder when Sakusa will finally pull away from him, just like everyone else. 

Just like Osamu, who pulled away from being one-half of the Miya Twins in the middle of the peak of their volleyball career to go away and start a business of his own. Atsumu had let him because he knew he’d be happier that way and he’s grateful he had, because at least he wouldn’t be stuck in the middle of nowhere working odd jobs and night shifts like he is now. Just like his father who had abandoned them at the age of eleven for another family to take care of. 

Atsumu couldn’t feel betrayed then. Only shocked, only disappointed. Only numb, only empty. He’s always been empty, after all. Who is left to fill him up? What is left to fill up all the empty space with? Just like Suna, Sunarin, who had been the last straw, leaving him when he was so numb. How do you let go of someone you have loved for so long? He wonders if Sakusa would pull away. Just like everyone else he has loved. Just like everything else in the world.

Atsumu watches now, as a soft pink color blossoms on the top of Sakusa’s ears. “Oh, come on, Omi-kun, why are you gettin’ all flustered now?” His eyebrows raise. Then lower, a sign that he isn’t letting this go. Not in the near future, at least. Whispers in his ear, in low Kansai-ben because he knows, he knows just as well how much it turns Sakusa on, “Aren’t ya the one who’s trying t’ hold my—”

“It’s just a little humiliating to have my personal business aired like that to everyone,” Sakusa cuts in, making good use of the middle of Atsumu’s thighs as a personal hand-warmer. “I wouldn’t really care if it was just me, but Iizuna was involved. I don’t really like it when people talk about things in my life that they don’t know enough about.”

“What about yer family?” Atsumu asks, finally pulling down the zipper. Then the button. The old briefs he’s wearing under his jeans stretch over his hips as _he_ springs to life. “Did you come out to them? What did they think about it?”

Sakusa laughs bitterly. “They knew, but it’s not like they cared enough about what I wanted to do in life at that point.” He shrugs, then adds as an afterthought, “And if my parents didn’t already know that I was gay and honestly cared a little more about the things I’m doing than they actually do, they would have kicked me out of the house.”

“Oh. That’s...” Atsumu says. His face turns mournful for a half moment. “That’s horrible.” A rare moment of concern. An even rarer moment of pity. Sakusa sighs at the display of pity. _Not_ _now, not now._ Atsumu lets Sakusa slip his hand in the front of his jeans. There’s no frills, no flair to it. Then he opens his thighs further to accommodate his wandering hand.

“Might have gotten me expelled. I would have changed my name so I can move to the other side of the world, far away enough not to embarrass the family name here.” Sakusa waves it off and pretends that it didn’t bother him still. Instead, he slides his fingers upward as his hand wraps around the warmth of Atsumu’s cock. “How did you know?”

Sakusa’s hand feels so warm, so smooth over Atsumu that he can’t help but bite down a low moan. His glove has been so slick with sweat that Atsumu can’t help but feel his mind go straight into delirium as Sakusa unfolds him with his hands, all the while rougher with every passing second.

“Don’t know how it got to us, but I swear I heard some kids back at my old school talk about how _hot_ you guys were and how unfair it was.” Atsumu laughs, still delirious over the heat of Sakusa’s movements. The rumble of his laughter digs deep in the pit of Sakusa’s stomach. Sakusa laughs too, more gently, more softly. Their laughter bubbles up in the silence of the room, sweet and heady. “Must have been the girls who were delusional enough to think someone like you would date ‘em.”

Sakusa crinkles his nose. “Yeah, right. As if I would date someone that liked showing their affection in such… public ways.” Then the nose-crinkle relaxes and he pauses to pull down his glove, take it off and spit into his bare palm. “And, after all, I’m gay. I’ve always known I am.”

_God,_ Atsumu thinks as Sakusa moves over to wrap a warm circle around him again, _that’s actually kind of fucking hot._ Sakusa coils his hand across the length of Atsumu’s cock, the corners of his mouth turning up into a small, shocked-still ‘o’ with the warmth of Sakusa’s palm pressing against him. 

“Iizuna, wasn’t it. Nice guy, though I don’t know how he could stand to be with ya when you always looked so mad at everything. Thought he might have been a nutcase too.” Then, Atsumu adds, when Sakusa shoots him a glare, “Don’t get me wrong, Omi-kun. Just thought that other people would be more, like, wary of ya.”

Sakusa touches him harder. His fingers clench a little tighter around Atsumu’s cock. “I wouldn’t be standoffish or whatever you think I am to a _boyfriend_ of mine.” Sakusa rolls his eyes at Atsumu. “Stop saying that like we’re not two sides of the same asshole.” Something in him switches gears. Atsumu feels a little afraid as he looks into his black eyes and see something grow dark, darker. “Are you scared of me, Miya?”

* * *

“Suna,” Atsumu manages, “how could you run away from me so fast? How could you run away from me for so long?” He presses his palm to the swell of Suna’s cheek, checking if he was real. Checking if all this was real. “How could you leave, Suna? How could you find it so easy for you to leave without a trace?”

Suna tears up a little and he looks away. Atsumu wills him to stop looking away from him. He wants to look at him as he cries. Wants to be the one to wipe the tears off his face. “When did you get so good at making me feel bad, Atsumu?”

And that’s all it takes to make Atsumu shatter, make Atsumu crumble down to pieces in front of him. He cries. And cries. And cries. There are rivers of salt pricking at the corners of his eyes and the rivers flow down his cheeks. Tears spilling from his cheek, to his forefinger, down the lines of his palm. 

It’s like he turned into a river overnight, crying and crying and crying tears for the boy he had loved the most one time in his lifetime, for the boy who had tried to rip him apart with his bare hands and succeeded. He turned into a lake overnight and it all feels so endless, like something to sink back into.

He’s trying to take him apart and he keeps responding. Suna is taking him apart again with his bare hands and raw words and Atsumu is letting him. It’s his way of making it up to him.

* * *

“Yeah, yeah.” Atsumu’s smile grows wider, baring his top teeth, even just a little. This is the first time he’s smiled this wide, and it’s when Sakusa is telling him off for being as much of an asshole as he is. Atsumu considers briefly if he might be a masochist. “What happened to you and Iizuna?”

“Things got busy when we had to find a good school for uni.” Sakusa looks down with a wistful expression on his face as his hand crawls further and further up. Atsumu knows that look on his face. Knows it just as well because he’s had that look so many times. Something akin to a frown, although not quite. A little less melancholy and a little more longing. “I knew he really didn’t need the responsibility of having a sort of boyfriend on top of all the things he needs to do for school.”

Atsumu nods in understanding as he looks down at him with his cheek propped up on his hand as his arm’s resting on the pillow. “Guess you thought you probably wouldn’t have been able to keep it goin’ for long. What if you were, though?”

Sakusa looks back up at him, confused. “Well, nobody can tell how things will end.” He jerks his hand up and watches as Atsumu writhes in pleasure. “You just have to take the risk. It’s okay with me, I guess. Maybe it was just a crush, the kind everyone had back in high school. An infatuation of sorts.”

“Yeah, that’s the point of dating that makes it fun,” Atsumu manages to say, still half-breathless with pleasure as the warmth forms slowly and steadily at the tip of his cock. “Taking risks without thinking too hard. Do ya regret it, then? Breaking up with him? Or, letting him break up with you?”

Sakusa thinks for a while, face contorted in concentration, then sighs. “No need to regret things, really. Like I said, it’s okay. It’s really okay. No need to think too hard about what could have happened. I don’t think I loved him enough, or ag all, to think of him up until now. It was just a small fleeting thing and I was happy to have it, but it doesn’t matter.” 

Atsumu studies Sakusa’s face for a moment as a look of pity settles on his eyes, his mouth. “Yeah, same, I guess.” That’s a lie. He hadn’t stopped thinking of Suna, ever. He couldn’t help but wonder if he would still think of him when he’s old and married to someone else. “But it was so easy to feel like I was in love with Sunarin back then. It’s easy, really, to be with Sunarin like that,” he says, his breath stolen by the way Sakusa’s hand feels so warm against his bare skin. 

Sakusa hums in response, moving his hand faster. Atsumu moves in coordination with his movements. It would have looked so pathetic of him, moving so desperately against his hands, if it didn’t all look so beautiful. “Just watch him as he works on his assignments or somethin’ like that. Let him sit beside ya as you do yer own thing. We didn’t even have to talk much at all.”

“Silence is nice, sometimes. What happened, then?”

* * *

And Suna turns silent now, watching him as he cries. He offers him a tissue wordlessly, and says his name with the utmost softness one could offer a crying boy. “Atsumu.”

“Suna. Sunarin.” Atsumu feels smaller and smaller now. Smaller than he used to in the fourth grade before he hit his growth spurt. He feels younger and younger now, like the more mature parts of him were taken away by other people. “Will you come back? Will you be my best friend again?”

“Okay.” Suna smiles, and it’s so soft. Atsumu feels his own heart waver under the entrapment of his chest, like it’s performing its own little ritual, its own little ceremony as a celebration of the resurrection of old things. “Okay, Atsumu.”

* * *

“He liked the silence. Maybe a little too much.” Atsumu sighs, the old feeling of loss swelling in his chest. “And maybe I couldn’t bother thinking about what to fill it up with.”

“Maybe you were wrong about that,” Sakusa says quietly. “I think you should have talked more, showed your love more.”

“Yeah, looking back, there was a lot of things wrong with us, honestly.” Atsumu feels Sakusa’s eyes boring into his face, so he looks away. Surrenders under his heavy stare. “Of all those things, maybe the communication was the worst.”

Sakusa nods, prompting him to continue as he lets Atsumu come in his palm with a shaky breath, bucking his hips up into Sakusa’s hand, until it turns hot and sticky with the warm wide seed from his cock. “Go on, go on. I’m listening.”

“I thought it wouldn’t matter all that much,” Atsumu says, hips still wavering from him riding his high. “Thought we would be one of those couples who understood each other with one look. But it all went downhill at some point. Neither of us had enough time to talk to each other anymore.”

“Damn.” Sakusa lets out a low whistle, sticking his tongue out to lick at his palm to wipe his hand clean. “What happened?” And, _holy fuck,_ Atsumu thinks, _that’s really hot._ He feels a little drowsy, really, a little light-headed from how Sakusa’s touching him, holding him in his hands. He’s got him all worked up, his touch feather-light. It’s always so light, always so warm. How could you not feel so overwhelmed when his hands are running up and down your body? How do you not succumb to the temptations of your own desire?

On some other day where his mind is in the right place, he would have felt disgusted. He _should_ have felt disgusted. But, he thinks, maybe sex and disgust come hand in hand. What’s a little sex without some disgust emanating from it? What’s a little disgust to feed you, satiate you the moment you still feel so _hungry_ after one kiss, one short moment of fucking? Atsumu wanted it all, wanted them all. Wanted all of him, the pain, the pleasure. What’s a little pain without some pleasure? What’s a little pleasure without some pain. 

“Didn’t have enough patience to talk things out so one day, he just went and blew up on me.” Atsumu’s breath turns shallow, jagged as the pain grows heavier, a dead weight against his chest. “Said a lotta things I knew he didn’t mean, but at that moment I knew I didn’t love him. I didn’t love him enough to actually think that he was the one for me.”

“Why?” Sakusa asks, eyes widening as he looks up at him. There’s a moment that passes before he asks the question begging to be satisfied from his curious tongue. “I thought you would already be so sure when you enter a relationship like that. Did it mean anything to you? Did it really, ever?

* * *

“Did you love me, Sunarin?” Atsumu asks, near desperate. He doesn’t know what he’s hoping for, really. Asking Suna such a question would be like tossing a coin for head and tails except both sides are blank. With this question, in this situation where he’s standing in front of him, what would he be hoping for? Was he hoping for an answer, really?

“I could ask you the same question, ‘Tsumu.” And oh, he’s trying to make that answer enough for him. “Atsumu.” Suna says his name warily now, like he’s afraid of him. How did it go so bad that it has to be like this? How bad did it all get for them to act like this? “Did you even love me, Atsumu?”

Atsumu goes silent. How long has it been since he had let himself go quiet? The silence passes for a mere second and it’s all so uncomfortable. Atsumu can feel and hear himself squirm under Suna’s scrutinizing gaze. The only thing left for him to do is swallow down his pride. He says, “I’m sorry.” It’s the only word he has ever known. “I’m sorry, Suna. ‘m sorry.”

Suna smiles now, even when Atsumu is crying, feeling more bare than he’s ever been whenever he strips himself naked. He might smile at Atsumu even when he would cry blood in front of him. And his smile doesn’t look sad at all. His smile is not one of pity. It’s not mournful either, like he always used to look like. “It’s okay. ‘S okay. I’ve always known. You’ve always loved me a little better when I’m naked, after all.”

The room is filled with an endless litany of apologies until Suna presses a thumb to his lips, swiping it over his cupid’s bow like it’s a zipper, to shush him from crying. Atsumu looks into his eyes and sees nothing but promises. Promises of a better tomorrow for himself, perhaps. Atsumu wishes, for a fraction of a moment, that he would take away that finger over his lips and replace it with his mouth. Then he wipes the thought away as quick as Suna pulls his finger away.

If this is what reconciliation feels like, why did it feel so much like something to feel guilty over? Was it truly reconciliation if you would still feel like you’re standing in the aftermath of a tragedy, amidst the debris of a devastation? Atsumu puts his hand to his chest, and it hurts, it hurts, it _hurts_ him to no end.

* * *

“I loved him as a friend, sure, ‘cause he was my best friend after all. Besides ‘Samu, anyway.” Atsumu sighs, suddenly nostalgic. “It wasn’t like I liked someone else, don’t get me wrong. I only had eyes for Sunarin at that time. But maybe I loved him only because he was familiar. ‘Cause he knew me like I knew him and maybe I was just afraid of losing him.”

Atsumu’s breath hitches in his throat, his eyelids suddenly feeling heavy as he stops himself from crying. A lone tear struggles to drop from his glass eyes and Sakusa wipes it with his clean hand. “Stop,” Sakusa says, rolling over to crawl further and further up until he’s lying down, sprawled on top of Atsumu’s chest. “Stop talking right now. Miya.” 

“You promised to call me Atsumu.” Sakusa cups his face into his hands to shut him up, until their bodies are warm, so warm under the flickering light of the lampshade. Sakusa’s mouth feels warm, and Atsumu’s eyes widen a little as he takes a sip of the little affection Sakusa lets him taste.

In this light, their silhouettes move closer and closer to each other in heated ceremony. Their bodies turn warm as they press into each other, one’s anatomy over the other. In this warmth, they both turn into marble, immortalized. And it might have been a trick of the light but Atsumu finds a little love in Sakusa’s eyes as he looks at him, eyes wide open.

* * *

“And you wanna scream, don’t call me kid, don't 

call me baby. Look at this godforsaken mess 

that you made me. You showed me colors 

you know I can't see with anyone else.”

* * *

“Well?” Sakusa asks, the lower half of his body still covered with the rumpled sheets. His chest is still bare, a rare moment of nakedness as his clothes lie down on the ground, all of the articles unfolded. Another rare moment, this one of carelessness. Uncaring. “Are you feeling any better now?” 

“I just,” Atsumu starts to say. A weak sob rocks in his chest, low and muffled as he speaks. A rare moment, this one of hesitation. Of vulnerability once more. “I just don’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do when he left.” The sound that comes out of his throat is more of a howl. “I didn’t know what to do with myself when he left like it was so easy to do.”

“Atsumu, calm down.” Sakusa holds him closer, tucking his head in his chest. He rakes his fingers through his blonde hair, and Atsumu has never felt any younger. He looks like a little boy now, cradled by the arms of someone he loved. Maybe, maybe, this scene would be picture-perfect. Maybe, if only Atsumu loved him, if only Sakusa loved him. If there was any love in the middle of all this, in the core of all this.

“Maybe he got sick of me.” Atsumu swallows down the lump in his throat as he speaks, his lip quivering. “Maybe he just realized that he was too good for me. And he was, really, he really was. Always there for me when I needed him. Maybe I wasn’t as much of a good friend to him as I thought I was. Maybe I didn’t love him hard enough, soft enough. I wasn’t good enough as a lover, was I? I tried so hard, I really did.”

“But you made him feel loved, didn’t you? You made him feel so loved, so warm. And even if you didn’t love him the way you were supposed to, he felt so warm.” Sakusa presses his mouth to the crease between his brows, kisses off the tears rivering under his eyelids. “You know, Atsumu,” he says, “you don’t have to love someone to make them feel warm.”

“What do you mean?” Atsumu asks, near breathless. Almost desperate now, even. He wipes the tears off his face, finally ceasing from crying. “Omi-kun, what do you mean by that?”

“Atsumu, I’m sure you think that you have to love someone to be able to hold them so gently, kiss them so softly. But oh, Atsumu, whenever you touch me, it all feels so gentle. It all feels so much like love.” Sakusa looks at him. “Whenever you touch me, Atsumu, I have never felt more warm.”

* * *

Suna stands in front of him now. Atsumu asks him for even the smallest hint of closure. He never got the answers to his questions, but he only gained even more questions. Suna, at least, looks a little happier, a little brighter as Atsumu looks at him. Atsumu can’t help but wonder if, in the future, there would be someone who would make him shine so bright. 

Atsumu wonders if he could still ask him, ask him for a favor. Ask him to close his lips around his, asks him to act like he could be his lover again. Once, he would not have hesitated. Once, when he loved him, and he loved him back. When he did, when he really did. Now, Atsumu wants, just once, to be selfish. The cruel truth of knowing that right now, Suna was nothing less than an illusion standing in front of him settles in his stomach, heavy, unbidden. It’s cruel, so cruel, but he lets it bask in the warmth of the pit of his stomach. A reminder of sorts of how easy it is to forget how cruel one could be in the name of love. A reminder of sorts, of how easy it is to forget how selfish you once had been.

Suna looks at him now and he looks every bit more beautiful than before. The light around him frames his face in angles that are so beautiful, so flattering. Pale orange light ricochets off the lines of his face, bathing him in golden. His bangs still hang over his forehead and it all looks so effortless. How has Atsumu been able to stand still al these years and not fully understand how pretty he was? He’s been stupid, so stupid.

Atsumu spares another furtive glance at Suna. Even more beautiful in this light that bounces off his face, in the direction where Atsumu’s looking at him. “Suna, can you kiss me?” he asks, on the brink of desperation, like he’s always been. He’s been tethering on it all this time, desperate enough to ask, desperate enough to beg for an ounce of his affection. “One last time before I let ya go? Kiss me before I go crazy.”

“Atsumu, you know I can’t do that.” Suna’s breath hitches in his throat and he sounds like he’s going to cry. “Atsumu, you know you won’t be able to move on if I do that. I want you to move on. I just want you to be happy. For you, for us. For your piece of mind, if anything. I just want you to be happy.”

“How can I be happy, Suna?” Atsumu looks at him and his gaze softens like butter. It always does, when he’s looking at his best friend. “How can I be happy if it isn’t with you? I was happy with you. I can be happier when I’m with you. How could ya think I wouldn’t be happy with you? Sunarin, how?”

“No, Atsumu.” Suna takes Atsumu’s hands in his, forming a steeple position with them. His hands feel warm now, even warmer than he remembers. “I know you wouldn’t be happy enough with me.” He smiles at him again, his eyes forming crescents. “Trust me, I know better. You’ll be happier with someone else. I’ll stay as your best friend, but only as your best friend, if that’s what you want. You’ll find someone.”

Atsumu feels something grow heavy on his tongue. “Will you be there for me when I screw up?” He looks at Suna once more and feels himself soften. “When I fuck up this time?”

“Don’t fuck this up, Atsumu.” Suna smiles. It feels so much like home. So much like coming home. “I know you won’t.” There it is again. That smile. How could he look so happy when Atsumu had broken his heart a million other times? How could he look so happy telling Atsumu to chase after someone else this time, when Atsumu has never been able to show him the love he deserves? How could he be so full of love, of affection that he just keeps giving it, all of it, even when Atsumu knows he doesn’t deserve it? How, oh _how._

* * *

“Atsumu, Atsumu.” Sakusa calls his name once he blanks out. “Miya. Are you even listening to me?” He looks at him in the eye. “How could you say you weren’t good to him? You made a mistake, sure, but have you ever thought about how kind, how sweet you have been to him? To anyone? Don’t underestimate yourself like that. Stop selling yourself out.”

Atsumu feels himself soften, turning to putty in his hands. “Okay.” His knees shake a little from the way he’s looking at him, from the way he’s holding him in his hands. “I get it. I just think we, Sunarin and I, spent too much time having sex that we didn’t know what else to do with each other. We were friends first. Why was there no love at the center?”

“Love and sex don’t necessarily have to be separated from each other to have a healthy codependency.” Sakusa looks at Atsumu, studying him. “Doesn’t have to be just one thing or the other to have a relationship. Why are you thinking about this now? Don’t tell me you regret it. It’s been so long.”

“But the thing is, we had too much sex and too little love. I think we depended on the sex part to make the lack of love enough.” Atsumu swallows down the lump in his throat, the kind he gets whenever he thinks about things of the past, whenever he thinks about Suna. “I don’t know if it could have been called love in the first place. Our relationship grew stagnant, and before we even knew it, it was over, just like that.”

“Oh, Atsumu.” It’s all there’s ever left to say. “Oh, Atsumu.”

“Love talks louder than sex does, but we turned the sounds off and tried to make it work.” Atsumu breathes out, heavy. “We tried hard enough, we tried so hard to make it enough without knowing that love goes hand in hand with sex.”

“You’ve gotten through your whole life thinking about him. Caring about him. Thinking about what he wants to do.”

“Yeah, well, Sunarin had gotten so used to living without having to think of someone else.” Atsumu looks at Sakusa, his gaze soft. “And I had gotten so used to living with him that I just, I don’t know, couldn’t imagine being with someone else for the longest time. How could it have been so easy for him not to think about me? Not to think about what I felt?”

“It probably wasn’t you,” Sakusa says. Although he seems a little doubtful of his own words, Atsumu is inclined to believe him. “Things like that probably come with growing up without siblings. Especially younger ones, you know. It wasn’t your fault. He’s always been a little more detached. But aren’t you friends with him now? That’s, that’s at least one step down.”

“I don’t know how to define desire at this point, really, without thinking of Sunarin. There’s a lot of things that I have linked to him, a lot of things I have to unlearn now. It’s kinda hard learning to live without ‘im. Living without that extra pair of slippers laid out in front of yer cabinet, living without an extra body to fill up all of the empty space in the room.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you’ll find someone else to fill it all up.” Sakusa looks at him and Atsumu feels like he’s at his limit.

Atsumu couldn’t place a name to the feeling that he gets in his chest whenever he looks at Sakusa. He has been sitting and musing about it for weeks now, wondering if he still stood exactly where he had been when he first met him. He’s been standing at the edge of desire for so long that it would be so easy to confuse this, all this, into something he wants, something he’s been looking for. How do you begin to categorize everyone in your life, after all? How do you distinguish your love for someone over their familiarity?

* * *

And there he goes again, there they go again. Sakusa’s with him again, sitting on his lap in his car, having pulled it over from the road, safe from passing cars and too bright lights.

“You know, Atsumu. You’re always so good with your hands.” Sakusa runs his hand down the rivering lines of his chest. “It’s like you know how to make my body move.” He brings his hand up to his cheek, caressing it. “It’s like you know so well how to make me want to scream out your name.”

And _fuck,_ Atsumu has never wanted someone so bad, has never wanted to have someone so bad. The way Sakusa is looking at him is about to drive him insane, drive him off the rails. “Sakusa,” he says, low into his ear, “I touch ya like that ‘cause I want you. I want to make you feel good. I want _you_.”

“And it’s not even like I haven’t been touched before. It’s not like I don’t want to be touched by other people,” Sakusa continues. He reaches out a hand to touch him again, this time to pull him closer to his lips. “It’s just that they don’t touch me in the ways that I want to be touched. It’s not like I’ve been celibate my whole life.” Presses a kiss to the side of his mouth. “You just have such a way with your hands that you can make me feel good the moment you touch me.”

“Touch me, then. Touch me like how you want me to touch you and I’ll follow your lead.” Atsumu crawls his hand further and further up Sakusa's chest, where he was bluer than the other parts of his body. “I’ll try to recreate everything that you want me to do to you.” Where Sakusa was bluer, he was so much warmer. Where he was bluer, where he was warmer, he was also lonelier. “Come on, come on, I want ya to touch me, please. I want ya to fuck me like you want to be fucked.”

Atsumu has learned earlier than most not to mistake others’ warmth for longing. So Atsumu had learned earlier that the pinks blossoming on his chest was from the heat he felt, learned to try not to mistake Sakusa’s warmth for intimacy. Still, how could he know, after all? How could he know when love has always been so foreign, always been so unfamiliar to him? After all this time, he has never known when the love starts and the sex stops. Where does it all begin, after all? Where do all the redder, colder parts of his body disconnect? Where do all the bluer, warmer parts of his soul begin?

* * *

Atsumu looks at Sakusa and feels himself shiver. When he touches Sakusa, he doesn’t flinch. He doesn’t falter, doesn’t twist away from his grip. It all feels so much like the first day of spring, where he was always happier. “Where does your love begin, Omi-kun?” Atsumu looks into Sakusa’s eyes and sees onyx. Black, pure black. Unreadable. He looks into Sakusa’s eyes and he does not see the exact shade of burnt coal, does not see the paling smoke that comes from it.

“My love.” Sakusa looks at him and in Atsumu’s eyes, he sees only gold, pure gold. He’s been panning for gold all this time, a prospector lost in the lustrous flash of the eyes of a boy who’s not quite his lover yet. In this light, under Sakusa’s gaze, he turns crystalline. There’s a twinkle in Sakusa’s eye as he looks down at him. Lays a finger on Atsumu’s chest, then back on his own. “It begins here. My love begins here.”

Atsumu looks at him back. “Do ya think it will ever end?” His gaze softens as he says this, his lip quivering once. But only once, just once. How long has it been since he has allowed himself to sound this weak, this fragile? “Will ya ever stop?”

“Not now.” Sakusa drags a slow line up to Atsumu’s lips, a smile dawning on his face as he feels Atsumu shiver. “Not in the near future. I don’t think I’ll get sick of you, dumbass.”

Sakusa loves him, and he makes it so easy for Atsumu to reciprocate, because he’s never been about turning anything into a big deal. He’s never been about being sweet, always about being honest. Sakusa has always known how Atsumu felt so empty, so numb, so he tries to love him back into the point of resurrection. He tries so hard to make it enough. And oh, _oh_ , Atsumu tries so hard to make it love. Tries to make his chest warm, his eyes something for him to bask in. Their love begins here. That’s the third and now, the most important event that has happened to them.


End file.
